Is this the problem with policy-making on the hoof? Cast your minds back to Tuesday April 22nd when Adam Boulton of Sky News was moderating the second leaders’ debate in Bristol. A week earlier Nick Clegg had suddenly burst onto the scene with his first debate appearance and the polls had changed dramatically. The general view was that Cameron had performed below par and the pressure was on him to do much better. In the second debate he was clearly…
Betfair Politics Candidate Best bookie price Betfair Back – Lay David Miliband 2/5 1.41 – 1.43 Ed Miliband 21/10 3.80 – 3.85 Ed Balls 66/1 75 – 120 Andy Burnham 80/1 140 – 300 Diane Abbott 150/1 220 – 330 But is it really done and dusted? Yesterday I had lunch with someone who is close to Labour’s leadership battle and he was far from convinced that a David Miliband victory is a foregone conclusion. He wondered whether the MPs…
Alexander Drake revisits Australia ahead of Saturday’s election With less than a week to go until the 2010 Australian federal election, we are now seeing a deluge of polling – giving us some mixed messages. The second week of the campaign was the most difficult week of the campaign for Labor, with leading journalist Laurie Oakes running a story that Julia Gillard was wary of supporting a paid parental leave scheme during a Cabinet meeting. Key pollsters such as Newspoll,…
Is the next fortnight crucial? In the thread on the Labour leadership last Thursday our Tyneside Labour expert, Henry G Manson, suggested that the unions who had backed Ed Miliband were a tad reluctant about putting their campaigning resources behind the man that they have endorsed. For punters that could be a crucial piece of information. For if we are to believe the only poll of actual voters in this election this showed DavidM well ahead in both the membership…
Will this reinforce yellow support for the coalition? Both the Times and the Telegraph this morning carry news on their front pages that the coalition is to back Vince Cable’s Lib Dem proposal that university tuition fees should be replaced by what will surely become known as the graduate tax. Both papers are following up on an interview in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend in which he was quoted as saying that the PM was “100% behind the plan”…
Didn’t voters simply want change? Will Straw’s Left Foot Forward blog has just published a Yougov poll which seeks to find out why Labour lost. Issues like Gordon Brown, immigration, Iraq and Afghanistan are tested. Yet on looking at the survey the LFF questioning seems to have been far to introspective to Labour and focuses too much on issues. For the following, based on polling at the time are the reasons, surely, why David Cameron is now PM. The mood…
What now for the man who walked across Afghanistan? One of the developing stories this afternoon is a grovelling apology to his constituents from the new MP who is fifth favourite to become next Tory leader. Ex-army officer, diplomat, old Etonian and alum of Balliol College Oxford, Rory Stewart has had one write-up after another since winning the Penrith and Borders seat at the election. Unfortunately in one of the latest, an interview with the Scottish Sun, he’s gone a…
Wikimedia Commons Me from Brazil looks at this autumn’s presidential election It’s been over a year since Dan Hamilton wrote an amazing article about the presidential election in Brazil. It has been a boring campaign until about a month ago, but considering that the Constitution does not allow any kind of campaign at this point, it’s understandable that things are a bit slow. Lula and his candidate, Dilma Rousseff, are now firmly favourite. Her alliance is broader than José Serra’s,…